LOS ANGELES -- A woman who was close to a dead man and his missing wife testified Monday that her friends thought the murder suspect who rented a guest house behind the couple's home was "kind of creepy. "

The testimony came Monday during the trial of Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, 52, aka Clark Rockefeller. He is accused of bludgeoning John Robert Sohus to death, trisecting his body and burying it in the backyard of a San Marino home he shared with Sohus, his wife Linda and his mother, Ruth "Didi" Sohus. Linda Sohus vanished around the same time her husband did.

Witness Susan Coffman said she visited the Sohuses in 1983, asked about the guest house and wondered why newlyweds John and Linda Sohus didn't live there.

Coffman, who described herself as a lifelong friend of the missing woman, also recalled the last conversation she had with her friend in early February 1985. She said Linda told her John had a job opportunity with the government and the couple would be traveling back East for a couple of weeks.

Defense attorneys used Coffman's testimony to bolster their case that Linda might have had a role in John's slaying.

Coffman received a postcard marked "Paris, France" and signed "John and Linda" several weeks after the couple disappeared. The card, complete with a photo of the Eiffel Tower at sunset, contained a short, handwritten message.

"Hi Sue - Kinda missed New York (oops) but this can be lived with - John + Linda "

It was one of four similar postcards received by friends and family of Linda Sohus in late April and early May 1985.

A sheriff's criminalist said she examined two of the postcards for DNA that might link them to Linda Sohus or Gerhartsreiter.

One contained no DNA consistent with either Gerhartsreiter or the missing woman. The other contained DNA consistent with having been handled by two people, according to Tiffany Shew, the criminalist.

In Shew's opinion the same unidentified male licked both stamps. The second person could not be identified, although a portion of the DNA profile contained a marker common to 50 percent of all living humans. Another marker is shared by one-third of the human race, Shew said.

THere was no DNA link to Gerhartsreiter on either postcard.

In an effort to paint a picture of John and Linda Sohus, Coffman described the couple as being like puppy-dogs but admitted they struggled with money problems and Linda did not like living with John's mother Didi, whom Coffman described as a drinker.

"(Linda) was frustrated," Coffman said. "He wanted to leave too. They both wanted out of that house. "

Coffman said she became concerned about her friend when Linda missed a planned trip to a science-fiction convention in Phoenix. The friends planned to get there in a pickup truck purchased by Linda in early 1985. Prosecutor Habib Balian alleges Gerhartsreiter took the pickup to Connecticut in the summer of 1985 as he was fleeing Southern California.

Patrick Rayermann, a retired Army officer and lifelong friend of John Sohus, recalled a dinner he had with the couple days before they disappeared. He said there was tension over their living arrangements, but the couple appeared warm, friendly and loving to one another.

Earlier in the morning two women who worked with Gerhartsreiter testified about their interactions with the man who would become Clark Rockefeller.